TMNT Manga
 

ok, here's my question: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Japanese Manga, is there such a thing, and if so, where i can get some?

Yeah, there's lots of it, but you wouldn't be interested in most of it. The majority of vintage TMNT manga is nothing but adaptations of episodes of the Fred Wolf cartoon with pretty lousy art.

Here's a rundown of the various TMNT manga series as well as a history of the line in Japan (though you can just skip to the manga section if that's all you want to know about).

You can read the entire Mutant Turtles Gaiden series here. It was a single volume, 4 chapter series of original content and its amusing, if anything. Art's pretty good and the story is a nice hybrid of light-hearted action and goofiness.

There's also a 3 volume Super Mutant Turtles series that's made up of original content. I intend to translate it, some day, but I'm waiting until I can get my hands on the first volume (Alex Winters owns volumes 2 and 3, and he provides me with the scans I need for translation, but neither of us can find Volume 1).


Anyway, hope that helps. Alex has lots of scans of the episode adaptation series if you'd like to see what that art looked like (but it isn't anything to write home about).

can u provide more links from Alex? and actually u might be surprised to learn that yeah i am interested in most of it, hense this thread. i'd like to hunt down some of it. can u give me a rough idea of how much there is?

Well, Here's Alex's flickr page full of scans. If he has more, I'm sure he'll come along and link you to them.

You may want to read some of that article I linked you to since it gives a complete rundown of what was produced.

But to simplify it for you:

15 volumes adapted episodes of the cartoon (two episodes per volume, so 30 episodes total).

1 volume adapted TMNT III.

1 volume of Mutant Turtles Gaiden.

3 volumes of Super Mutant Turtles.


That's about the size of it. There were also fumeti style "comics" (photographs of toys with captions and panels) and "story page" collections (two page color spreads with narrative text, but not really comics).

But so far as manga goes, that's all there is. There were some comedy strips that were done in a newspaper comic style, but I can't find anymore info on where they were published or if they were ever collected, so I can't say much in their regards (Ninjaturtles.com has some scans of them in their manga section but no furhter info).

ok, cool. thanks for all the info. just one more thing, how the heck do i find any of this, is there a site that sells it?

Yahoo Japan is the only auction site I've ever seen them appear on, and even then you're pretty much at the mercy of whether the sellers ship to America.

Some members of this site own copies and I know that's where Alex got a good chunk of his collection from, so you could ask around the buy/sell forum here and see if anybody is trying to unload some copies.

I, personally, don't own any. I had to get scans from Alex so I could translate and image edit them for my site.

shoot, so odds are not in my favor that book stores or comic shops around Canada would have any, dang! well maybe i'll get lucky. thanks again. is Alex on this site?

Who's "Alex"?:P

Sounds like he has a pretty good collection, maybe he has some items I don't!

you've got Manga? any doubles you'd part with?

Sorry, bud, but I don't own any doubles and don't have any intentions to sell at this time. I bought two from Roseangelo and all the rest off Steve Murphy, but I'm not sure if either of them have any extra copies left.

shoot. well thanks any way. i'll try Roseangelo just for fun

You can see a good number of scans from issues 5 & 8 courtesy of tOkKa's Flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/terribl...engenkicomics/

Enjoy! It's some pretty wild stuff!

so if i were to actually buy/find some of this, it's not actually translated then?

There has never been any official translation or international release of any kind for any of the TMNT manga.

When I did my translation of Mutant Turtles Gaiden, I made sure to keep in contact with Mirage via Dan Berger, letting them know what I was doing and updating them when I completed new chapters. Berger liked my work and encouraged me to continue with the series, showing it to the other guys at the Mirage office.

So while my translations aren't officially sanctioned or anything, I at least got "permission" to do them, and by "permission" I mean "this is cool so we aren't going to have our lawyers send you a cease and desist notice".

Now that Viacom owns the Turtles, that "permission" likely doesn't still stand, but so long as their lawyers don't find out about it, I should be fine.

well here's hoping that i can find some. i don't care if i can read or understand it, i'll just look at the pictures

Awesome thanks for the info!

i think my hunt for the Manga is going good. can get these:

15 volumes adapted episodes of the cartoon (two episodes per volume, so 30 episodes total).

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_c1uLvGqaoqE/TM...s/TMNTpic2.jpg

1 volume adapted TMNT III.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_c1uLvGqaoqE/TM...8/TMNTpic1.jpg

Wow!!!! That´s an amazing supercool purchase!!!
Im so jelous!!! LOL!!! Congrats!!! Those looks great!!!

yeah. kinda costing a pretty penny though. going to have to think it over.

If you're not buying these, I would sooo love to buy those manga. :)